nukes

Resource

Commentary [in progress]

Martin Hellman, of Diffie-Hellman fame, presents an argument for a rigorous quantitative risk analysis approach to assessing the danger posed by nuclear weapons optimism. For all the billions wasted on environmental impact statements, no one in the War industry wants to acknowledge the single biggest threat to the environment: our own 'defensive' weapons.

Another excellent talk by Martin Hellman.

A simple, yet powerful demonstration of the excesses of our nuclear arsenal. The EMP effects from even a single 'BB' exploding above a modern city would cause a humanitarian disaster without parallel. The addition of blast, fire, and radiation effects are unimaginable.

The lecturer, Matthew Bunn, avoids any commentary on the morality or rationality of any State possessing instruments of indiscriminate murder. This omission could simply stem from the speaker's choice of learning objectives, but I suspect he doesn't want to risk his Q-clearance by openly criticizing the USA's "nukes for me, but not for thee" policies.

A righteous and indignant take-down of superpower hubris by physician Helen Caldicott. Her feisty tone throughout is one of 'just who the hell do these people think they are in threatening the entire world?', and makes the grim subject matter a bit less depressing. The talk is full of wonderful stories of her experiences with world leaders and her efforts towards nuclear disarmament. Unfortunately she conflates the risks to humanity stemming from nuclear weapons with those from nuclear power. While there are serious issues surrounding safeguarding the civilian nuclear fuel cycles and cleaning up from industrial accidents, one need only compare the deaths resulting from nuclear power generation and any other power source to see that nuclear power is orders of magnitude safer than any viable alternative.

Using round numbers, the world consumes 100,000 Terawatt-Hours of energy from non-nuclear and non-renewable sources annually. Assuming even very conservative measures of deaths/TWh, many tens of millions of people have died simply due to a failure to adopt nuclear power on a broader scale.

Great interviews with the incredible Scott Horton. His expansive knowledge about domestic and international affairs from both a historical and contemporary perspective enables him to get the best out of his guests.

A trove of documents that lay bare the tedious, behind-the-scenes decisions and actions that created the nuclear arms race. Many of the documents are only available thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests by George Washington University. Carl Sagan said, "The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five..." and this site contains the historical documentation of that insane duel.